In Victorian times, no-one asked about another's sexual preferences. Personal privacy was paramount - and homosexuality was hardly an issue in that male dominated society.
Was Rhodes a homosexual?
The question demands an answer because modern society
is obsessed with sexuality. Today, no other question about Rhodes is more
common.
However, as Antony Thomas points out in his
biography of Rhodes (Jonathan Ball, 1996), the Victorians were not so obsessed.
In this respect, they were more tolerant about individual choice.
“People were seldom defined by the sexual act; the
idea of the homosexual as a member of a separate species is peculiar to our
century and, until very recently, to our Western culture. Indeed, the word
‘homosexual’ does not appear in the English dictionary until 1897,” he says.
Robert Hyams, in Empire and Sexuality, pointed out that
persecution of sexual deviation from the Pauline prescriptions of the
Protestant Church did not occur until a law was passed in 1885. This law – and
the notorious Oscar Wilde trial in 1895 – led to labeling and polarization, and
to the banishment of open affection between males. “Men in general were
impoverished, even diminished . . . The tendency to effeminacy was reinforced,”
he wrote.
These conclusions provide another reminder about understanding the past.
In this case it is essential that the marked differences between Victorian
attitudes and those of today are borne in mind if one is to understand the
behaviour of Rhodes and his liking for his young male secretaries and his
ardent young male admirers. Their
feelings, especially those of his acolytes (‘acolytes’ used in its correct
sense without gay innuendo) were openly expressed – and voluntarily and
enthusiastically published. Yet most of
Rhodes’s young associates who confessed their ardour for their hero chose
marriage and families, rather than obey his wishes to remain single and totally
loyal to him.
Now we can ask: was Rhodes a homosexual or not?
Robert Hyams and Antony Thomas believe not. They think he was asexual.
Another biographer has a long explanation for Rhodes’s occasional
falsetto and build, claiming that, physically, he never progressed sexually
beyond puberty.
On the other hand, Robert Rotberg, whose 800-page book The Founder,
demonstrates extraordinary research, believes Rhodes’s homosexual leanings are
indisputable. They were “a major component of his magnetism and his success,”
he writes. “. . . But the absence of scandal was evidence of physical
circumspection, whatever his underlying desires.”
The Victorian ethic was to control emotions, not to gratify them at all
costs. In doing so, their decisions in life were more stable than those a century
later. And less subject to outside influence.
Rhodes’s many biographers
appear to agree that he liked a select few women – especially Olive Schreiner
with whom he shared an undoubted physical attraction – and he loved many men.
Yet none of these attractions were allowed to affect his plans. (Rhodes was at
Oxford University at the same time as Oscar Wilde. There is no evidence that
they ever met – but Rhodes must have been deeply aware of the consequences of
Wilde’s actions.)
